


Starsong

by lunarblazes



Category: Game Grumps
Genre: If i ever WRITE THE REST, Siren Dan, Standalone, THIS IS A REMINDER TO KEEP WORKING ON THIS AU, ft. very bad descriptions of siren song, i hope you enjoy me scrambling to find words for rocks, i’m so sorry if this reads like a ramble, no idea how comprehensive this is, pretty sure i was in a trance for half of it, siren au, that’s it, the beginning of my non shippy siren ideas, the plot is arin is confused.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:41:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26021356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarblazes/pseuds/lunarblazes
Summary: Arin goes for a little walk to clear his head. This clears up absolutely nothing.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7





	Starsong

Arin enjoyed the night. The moon and stars were so clear out here, and the sound of the waves crashing gently against the shore was great for calming his nerves. Sometimes, when he couldn’t sleep, he’d leave Suzy in the house and go for a quick walk down the dock. The beach always had a specific air when no people were around, refreshing and clean, and if he got there at sunset, he’d catch the little white crabs as they scuttled across the beach. All in all, it was almost his favorite thing about coming here for his job. 

He stepped carelessly through the sand and surf, just staring ahead at the clear sky and the moonlight bouncing on the waves. This was exactly what he’d needed tonight. Most nights, he couldn’t find a reason why he couldn’t sleep, but tonight he definitely had one. Namely, the strange guy who’d showed up in town, seemingly out of nowhere, talking in a completely old fashioned dialect, with no ties to the rest of the country, and who had immediately endeared himself to Arin and Suzy. Something about him was very compelling, despite how… weird he was upon a first meeting. His name was Dan, if Arin was remembering right, and he’d just gotten a little job somewhere. Arin could not for the life of him remember where it was, but he’d been really excited about it, which made Arin excited for him too. He cracked a small smile at the memory while looking at the brilliant full moon in the sky, casting an ethereal glow on everything around him. 

The reason he couldn’t sleep was that he just couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something off about Dan. As nice and as trusting and funny as he seemed, there was still something a little weird with him, and Arin didn’t know how to get to the bottom of that. He couldn’t exactly just walk up and ask  _ hey! Why are you so weird? _ Something told him that wouldn’t go well. And another worrying thing was that as odd as Dan was, as much as he didn’t fit in, Arin trusted him wholly and completely. He had  _ no idea  _ why, but he did. A little thing deep inside his mind told him that he wasn’t just unsure of how to ask about Dan’s past, he also didn’t really want to. It was a little unsettling to think about, so he shoved it back down into his mind, but the thought had just kept wriggling until he’d gotten up and out of the house in an attempt to clear his head.

It hadn’t worked so far.

As he walked on down the soft sands of the beach, he realized that he’d unknowingly walked to the little dock where he did his job for the marine lab in town. The run down old thing had somehow survived multiple hurricanes, which made Suzy swear up and down that the thing was protected by some strange power. She was a big believer in supernatural stuff like that, and Arin didn’t care one way or the other, but it seemed a little strange that powerful forces would choose a tiny dock made of eight or nine thin planks of dark wood to protect. If he ever had some kind of encounter with the supernatural, he’d make sure to ask about it. Then he and Suzy would have an answer.

Arin heaved a sigh and sat down on the edge of the dock, legs crossed and eyes up in the sky. His hands were pressed gently against the planks of the dock, and for a minute he just breathed. Breathed in the scent of the sea, the warm ocean breeze, the sound of the cicadas chirping, the silence of the starlight above. The beautiful symphony was very good for distracting his thoughts, stopping their endless and unhelpful loop for a while. Sometimes he’d just sit on the beach and think about all the things he knew about space, or about if he was an old-school pirate, or maybe little fun facts that the marine biology students at the lab would tell him. Other times he just listened, his thoughts going still and silent for a blissful moment, a much needed break from the relentless cacophony.

He absentmindedly shifted his weight, dipping a foot into the water and propping his elbows up onto his thighs. His shirt was getting a little wet from sea spray, but it didn’t really matter. He’d probably just take a shower when he got home. He glanced down at the choppy surface of the gentle waves, glistening and glowing in the light of the moon. The stars were his little friends on nights like this, nights where his head refused to leave him be. When he was younger, he’d wanted to study the stars, to learn their names and their secrets, but that interest had faded as he grew to learn that the stars didn’t have secrets, nor names. Just little balls of gas hanging in a broad, endless void. 

Arin still thought they were singing to him sometimes, if he listened hard enough. He eventually figured that it was just his brain playing little clips of songs he’d heard during the day, but it was nice to pretend for a bit. He tilted his head, sighing softly as the breeze blew around his hair and riled up the waves. 

He closed his eyes, leaning back on the rough wood of the dock. Something quickly caught his attention though, nagging at his brain until he opened his eyes. He wasn’t sure what it was, maybe something in the air, maybe some unknown worry tickling him in the back of his mind, but something definitely demanded his attention. It wanted to be found. Scanning the horizon yielded no sign of something that could be causing this disruption. Arin frowned, intensely frustrated. He was a little surprised at the emotion that welled up when he couldn’t find whatever he was looking for. The beach was supposed to be calming, definitely not supposed to make him  _ angry. _

It was then that he heard it. A song, sweeping over the empty beach in the middle of the night, more beautiful than anything he’d ever heard before. He’d just been thinking of starsong. That had to be a coincidence, he thought to himself, there’s no way that the stars can sing. 

But as the melody of the song swelled in volume and in tempo, Arin found his grasp on his thoughts and skepticism slip away. All he wanted to do was get closer to the song, get closer to whatever was causing it, hear more of it. It was as if his mind had simply gone blank, all traces of doubt or voices of reason vanished in the blink of an eye. The frustration he’d felt so abruptly and clearly had sunken away, as well as the peace the waves and sky had brought, leaving a void of emotion. No feeling, no thought.

He slid off the dock and into the waves, slowly at first, careful steps sending little ripples into the restless ocean. All sense of care was abandoned soon after, along with the rapidly shrinking shore as Arin continued to follow the sound of the beautiful song. Soon the water was almost to his face. He couldn’t care less. 

The water closed in over his head. The song grew louder as Arin sunk to the ocean floor, all will to move gone.

Until suddenly the music stuttered to a halt, and Arin snapped back to his senses.

_ Uh… where am I? _

_ The beach.  _

_ No, wait, this is definitely not the beach. _

_ There’s something I need to do, right? _

  1. _BREATHING._



_ Wait, I’m underwater? _

_ SHIT, I’M UNDERWATER. _

Coughing up seawater and gasping for air, Arin broke the surface. He tread water, trying to locate where the horizon was. How the hell had he gotten out here? One second he’d been sitting on the dock, and the next he’d been in the middle of the fucking ocean, trying to remember how to breathe. His hair was strung across his face, obscuring his vision, so he pushed it away, trying to see how far he was from shore.

Oh thank god. The beach was only a few yards away, farther than he ever remembered going, but closer than he’d feared. Arin began to swim to shore, using the power of the waves to glide him safely along.

A cough to his left caught his attention. At this point, he was able to stand relatively well in the sand, but he had no idea who else could be out here or why. His head whipped to the left, where a small outcropping of rock stood.

“Uh… hello,” he called, very confused. “Is anybody over there?”

The rocks did not respond, but another cough came from among them. It was muted, like someone was trying to hold it in, but failing miserably.

“What the— okay, there’s definitely someone over there, or else I’m having a stroke. Hello?” Arin waited for a response. Nothing came, so he began to swim towards the rocks, peering in the corners and cracks carved in the formations. A little dash of movement followed by a quiet splash indicated that something had moved underwater. Arin raised an eyebrow and swam towards it, more curious than confused at this point.

“Huh.” He reached the spot where the ripples had spread from, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Something shifted in the corner of his vision, and he turned just in time to catch a figure darting behind a rock. They were definitely humanoid, and though their hair was wet, he could tell it had a lot of volume. It was curly and messy… wait. 

Arin was now entirely certain he was hallucinating or having a stroke or just fucking dying, because the only person he knew with that kind of hair around here was Dan. The one he’d come out here to get off his mind. There was no  _ way  _ this was real.

“ _ Dan? _ ”

“Ummm… hey?” Yep, that was definitely his voice, though it was hoarse and quiet, like he was pressing the sound down into his throat.

“Why the hell are you out here?”

“I could ask the same thing about you, you know.”

“You first.”

Dan hadn’t come out from behind the rock, but Arin could see his shadow tense up in the light of the full moon. “Uh… I like to swim when it’s nice out?”

“Yeah, and I’m secretly an octopus,” Arin replied sarcastically. That was complete horseshit, he could tell by the way Dan’s voice shook when he said it. “Why the fuck are you hiding behind that rock, dude?”

“I— I’m not hiding,” Dan squeaked, his voice shooting up about two octaves, indicating that he was definitely lying. “I’m just… tired! And using the rocks for support!”

“Then why don’t you come over here,” Arin huffed, swimming closer to the Dan-hiding-rock. 

“No, don’t—!”

Arin froze. He could see Dan now in the light of the moon, except it wasn’t Dan. It was something with black eyes, blue irises glowing inside. Blue specks covered his face, varying in shades of neon and deep blue. Arin suddenly realized they were  _ scales,  _ scales were covering his friend’s cheeks. His ears… Arin didn’t want to keep looking. This was too much for him. The weird blacking out and the strange emotions and now  _ this _ appearing in front of him. 

“Oh.” Arin said softly. Dan didn’t move from the rock he was clinging to, looking as though he would love to melt into the rock right at this moment. They just stared at each other for a while, neither moving nor daring to speak. 

Dan cleared his throat. His voice was shaky and barely above a whisper when he spoke. “Arin, please, you need to leave.”

Arin didn’t argue. He turned and swam away slowly, very willing to forget any of this happened. He was still sure that he was dreaming, or that he was hallucinating, or  _ literally anything  _ because this could  _ not  _ be real. He climbed up onto the dock, not looking back. The sand rubbed against his sandal’s straps as he made his way back across the beach in a daze. 

He didn’t even make it halfway before the song started again. 

The static in his mind from the night’s events grew and grew into a fog, obscuring any single thought, like reaching for a specific stone in a muddy river. Nothing mattered, all of a sudden, not even moving. His legs gave out, spilling him onto the sand as everything turned into a fuzzy image of the bright moon and dark sky. The last thing he saw before passing out was someone’s voice saying something about being careful.

He really hoped he wasn’t dead.

**Author's Note:**

> AND THEN HE FUCKING DIED GUYS OMG
> 
> \-   
> Anyway i decided to post this to motivate myself to write the rest of the AU i have planned. I wanted to write a non egobang siren au fic for people who dont totally dig that content and also because i like SIRENS   
> For all u nerds, dan’s a betta fish siren because i said so  
> I’ll post his ref in Places if anyone wants to see it my Instagram n tumblr is roseblazing and twt is roseblazing1  
> LEAVE A COMMENT IF YOU WANT TO SLAP ME WITH A FISH AND WRITE THE REST OF THIS SHIT


End file.
